Mediterranean Hegemon of Ancient Greece Chapter 74: Farewell

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Behind "Hercules" was herders driving 20 cows, followed by a huge parade composed of men, elderly, women, and children, but also pipers, drummers, and trumpeters. The cheerful melody, the whole team talked, laughed, and clamored, just like Hercules drove a herd of cattle across the Western Mediterranean, and walked around the whole city of Turiyi, filling the whole city with a lively atmosphere. .

The end of the parade is just the beginning of the celebration, followed by various competitions.

The most important competition in the celebration is the Hercules competition: contestants must carry five-meter-long cedar wood with thick thighs and walk a distance of 40 meters to pass the preliminaries. In the next elimination schedule, the players need to pick up the heavier stone pillars, lift the five kilograms of shot put, and see how long it takes to persist... The most important difficulty is pulling the carriage. Countless spectators are the players. Cheer up, watch them pull a huge carriage with a certain load, tighten their muscles, exhaust all their strength, and pull the carriage forward like a strong horse.

The winner of the championship will be awarded the title of this year's "Kingdom Hercules". After receiving the blessing of the priests of the Temple of Hercules, they will wear a crown of flowers on their heads, and they will cruise the whole city surrounded by enthusiastic people. He will also receive the honor of being received by King Daves and having a meal together, and will also be given a lot of material rewards.

An important competition during the celebration is wrestling. Everyone knows that Hercules is a master wrestler. Especially his battle with the giant Antaeus is well known to everyone. After nine years of development, the wrestling competition held at the Hercules celebration in the Kingdom of Dionian is no less than the traditional four Greek games. Compared with winning in the four major sports games, the main thing to get is honor; winning the championship in the wrestling competition in Turei, you can also get a lot of gold and silver awards, so there are many participants, and every game is quite equal. Intense tension.

The schedule of the wrestling competition lasts for nearly a month, and it happens to be the end of the celebration, and its champion also enjoys the same treatment as the champion of the Hercules competition.

It is said that among the spectators of these two competitions, military personnel and military commanders are often watching. Because these two competitions not only allow citizens and prospective citizens to participate, they also allow free citizens, Gentiles, and even slaves to participate. Those who get good grades will be lobbied by the Ministry of Military Affairs to join the Kingdom of Dionia or get out of slavery, because such outstanding players are generally good soldiers.

In addition to these two competitions, the celebration has other interesting competitions. For example: bull riding competition, sheep racing, pig-driving competition...This is also to show respect to the protector of animal husbandry-Hercules. The fun mountain climbing competition shows the adventure spirit of Hercules, and the hilarious wife-holding running competition is a tribute to this romantic god...

So unlike other celebrations, the Hercules celebration is always full of laughter. While being happy, Plato and the others also found that at least half of the contestants and spectators in the various competitions were non-Greeks, and they could fully feel their heartfelt reverence for the Greek god, and they were enjoying themselves. With the joy of the game, interact harmoniously with the Greek citizens.

Plato did not wait until the end of the celebration. At the beginning of June, he bid farewell to King Davos and Dionian Academy and prepared to return to Athens. After all, there is still a lot of business waiting for Akademi Academy. He went to deal with it.

Davers gave him a farewell banquet.

At the banquet, Plato said cheerfully: "For this period of time, I am very grateful to Your Majesty Daves for your great help! Give me plenty of time to observe the operation of the Kingdom of Dionia. I found Compared with other Greek city-states, Dionia has many advantages.

First of all, Dionia attaches great importance to education. The government has funded the construction of schools in various cities. The low school fees have allowed children over six years old in the kingdom to implement almost universal basic cultural education. This kind of education is all-round. It not only teaches children mathematics, literature, rhetoric, logic, philosophy...but also teaches sculpture, music, dance to nurture their souls, and physical exercises to strengthen their physique. When they reach adulthood, they are the gold and silver species of Dionia, and they can easily become good citizens of the kingdom.

Secondly, although Dionia emphasizes the role of law, it actually emphasizes moral education. Otherwise, you will not believe in Hades as the protector of your kingdom. Promote Hades's justice and strict punishment to guide the people to do more good deeds before their death... The same is true of your respect for Hera, and guide the people to love marriage and family, which has played a very important role in the stability of the kingdom. Dionia uses gods to guide citizens to be good. This is a very novel but very effective method, which is worth learning from other city-states.

Again, Your Majesty Daves, you said to me before, "You will not strictly divide the labor between the citizens of the kingdom", but Dionia has conducted a method called "assessment" on the public officials of the kingdom. Strict division of labor. Let those who know the law serve as judges, those who are good at producers as supervisors, those who are good at making money manage trade, and those who are good at statistics are in charge of money...Even your generals are promoted by soldiers and team officers. Yes, most of your city chiefs also have rich experience in city management. This is completely unlike most of the Greek city-states, including Athens. The senior city-state officials elected by the people through the citizens’ assembly are mostly hypocrites who can only speak frankly and cater to the people. They don’t know how to manage a city-state well, let alone how. Lead the troops to win victory. The blind ignorance of the people allowed these people to master the power of the city-state, how could it make the city-state strong!

Also, Your Majesty Daves, you allow girls and boys to receive the same education and sports training from childhood, and give them more property and freedom of life when they grow up, although they have not yet made it possible for women to be the kingdom. However, compared with other Greek city-states, you have done very well on the issue of equality between men and women.

Also, Dionia has also achieved fairness in the distribution of property. Every citizen of the kingdom can be allocated five acres of land, and then according to the citizens' contributions in the kingdom, they can be redistributed to land and other property rewards, instead of letting most of the kingdom’s public property be earned by nobles and wealthy people. Take..."

Hearing these words, Daves was in a good mood, half-joking and half-seriously saying to the other elders who came to the banquet: "Have you heard? Our party members have so many advantages. You should have more confidence in the kingdom. Work harder!"

Others also responded with a smile.

Plato did not smile. He stared at Davers and said seriously: "I found that Dionia has one of the greatest advantages, that is, your Majesty Davers!"

"Me?"

"Yes." Plato said with excitement: "As the king of a country, you are not above the law, but act in accordance with the law. You are not squandering and pursuing a luxurious life, but low-key. Temperance. As far as I know, the government of the Kingdom of Dionian and the bills that amaze me are mostly based on your suggestions. Without profound knowledge, in-depth observation and good judgment are difficult to achieve. But it is possible. Only philosophers can do all this! Philosophers don’t have to write treatises and be well-known. My teacher Socrates always only speaks but not writes. But your Majesty Daves, you only do nothing, you He is a true philosopher!"

Speaking of this, Plato looked excited and his eyes beamed: "My previous judgment was wrong. My ideal country is not impossible to exist in reality, but it is being realized. It is in Dionia!"

In his previous life, Plato had traveled to Tarantum. At that time, Tarantum was in its heyday. Plato fell in love with Achita, who was a consul for a long time, because he was a Pythagorean school. An important figure in the world, Achita is exactly the typical image of the "philosophical king" that Plato expects in his mind, so he highly praises Achita in his works. However, in this life, Achita died early, and Tarantum became a free city in the Kingdom of Dionia, but Plato turned his attention to Daves, who created more glories than Achita.

Of course, Plato, who was proud of the farewell banquet, did not admit that he had an obvious flaw compared with Dionian’s status quo in the book "Dreamland", that is, his eyes were a bit narrow before, and he only focused on A city even thinks that the population of the city-state should be 5,040 people, and Dionia has a huge population and vast land, which can also be governed well, which makes him very touched.

With a reluctant mood and longing for the future, Plato left Turíy and returned to Athens. While focusing on teaching, he also devoted most of his energy to more in-depth thinking about the city-state political system, and wrote the "Daves" a few years later, claiming that the value of this article far exceeds what he had previously done. I wrote articles such as "Lysis", "Gorgias", "Hippias", etc., and they are no less than the book "Utopia". This is something to follow.

Note: Finally finished this volume! I have never dared to write about Plato, philosophy, and academic controversy before, because I am not good at this. I have been advised by book friends to avoid it, but I later thought that since I wrote about ancient Greece, how could there be no classical era culture? The scene of a hundred schools of thought contends, so I bit the bullet and wrote it. For this reason, I read several books. Although the writing is relatively superficial, it defeated me anyway.

The next volume will be even more exciting, because there are things you want to see: Rome, Carthage, Etruscan, Egypt, Celtic, Iberia...

So the name of the next volume is "Western Mediterranean Storm"!